Make fieldwork & research trips kid-friendly
Taking your family on a fieldtrip often requires careful planning to ensure safe and fun interactions with new environments, communities and cultures.
Taking your kids into the field may be a fantastic educational opportunity, but fieldwork can be stressful at the best of times, even when you aren’t juggling the demands of research and family. Here we provide information to help you kick-start a family-friendly research trip that is safe and enjoyable for all.
Join our community today and we will send you the latest tips to help you prepare for your next field trip.
Interview with Christina Hicks on taking kids into the field.
Resources on making research trips child-friendly.
Juggling Fieldwork With Kids In Tow
Global
This article from the Nature Jobs blog gives useful advice for researcher-parents who want to balance their children’s needs with work priorities while in the field.
Fieldwork While Parenting
Global
This new blog provides a series of short articles by people who have taken their children into the field with them. The focus is on how to make fieldwork family-friendly. The coordinators are always looking for new content, so if you have interesting stories or information that might help readers, details on how to contribute your stories can be found here.
Georgina Sweet Award For Women In Quantitative Biomedical Science
AU
This fellowship is targeted at supporting mid-career female researchers in Australia who work in Quantitative Biomedical Science. The grants are research focused, but can be used towards childcare costs associated with the recipient’s work.
Anne Penfold Street Awards
AU
The Australian Mathematical Society’s grant can be used to cover childcare costs for parents traveling for research.
Information to help smooth your journey
The Raising Children Network
The Raising Children Network, a website endorsed by the Australian Government, provides some great fact sheets and checklists to help prepare any parent for traveling with their children, whether it be by car, plane, train or bus.
Flying with Baby
Flying with a baby describes itself as the ‘ultimate guide to family travel’, and we certainly think it is a life saviour when traveling with a little one. It provides lots of advice and tips, including a great summary table of different airlines and their bassinets so you can check whether your child will fit!